Disrupting the Status Quo
ConvExx has canceled the launch of their dive industry trade show, per Expo Magazine. It reminds me of when I canceled the nanotechnology event I tried to launch in 2004 - it was one of the toughest days ever in my tradeshow life. For all of the research we did - narrowing our choice of launches to that industry - we were still wrong.
This kind of thing scares the heck out of me because it’s difficult to tell what happened. I would love it if Chuck Schwartz had a blog and posted about why he thought exhibitors wouldn’t give their show a chance - to know what exactly ConvExx did to try to make their event different from the status quo show, DEMA, and why it still wasn’t enough.
It shows us all that changing the mindset of an industry is a tremendous undertaking. It’s not enough just to offer another choice when exhibitors are unhappy with the competition. Did he mis-interpret the unhappiness of exhibitors with the current event? Did he not offer something different enough to make it worth the exhibitor’s dollars?
Chuck - what happened? What would you have done differently if you could start all over? Please, I MUST know! I would love it if SISO or IAEM offered a session at their conferences where the panelists were all people who tried to launch a new event, failed, and are willing to talk about why. It’s tough to tell the world you failed, but I’d volunteer to talk about my nanotechnology event just to be able to hear other folks tell their stories as well - I’d bet it would be one of the best sessions at the show.
August 13th, 2005 at 11:09 pm |
Recent DEMA events have been managed by NTP, which is a client of mine, although I don’t work on that show.
I don’t know any of the details of this (in fact didn’t even know a competing show was being planned), but I will say that during the past two years, every show NTP has touched has gotten significantly better.
I would imagine that at the start of due diligence by Convexx there may indeed have been desire by exhibitors to break off because of different issues regarding venue, timing, content, etc., but it appears that DEMA, with NTP’s assistance, has responded to its markets’ desires in such a way that there is no longer a hue and cry for a competing event.
August 15th, 2005 at 11:10 am |
I was just reading this morning about the 2x rule–if you want to take on the status quo, what you do better be twice as good as what the status quo is doing (this was in relation to MSN’s Virtual Earth taking on Google Maps, but I’d say the same holds for trade shows). The URL is
http://jameskew.blogspot.com/2005/08/twice-as-good-rule.html.
I’d think this is especially true if the status quo, once in decline, started getting better as the new show developed, which is what sounds like the case here, given what Rich says.
I love the idea of sessions on “where we went wrong.” As I tell myself when I’m skiing, if I don’t fall down, I’m not pushing myself very hard to improve. Except it’s less painful to learn from other’s mistakes.